


3 a.m.

by 75hearts



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Trans Character, Character Study, Gen, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 03:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13180992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/75hearts/pseuds/75hearts
Summary: The devil is coming.No. That's not quite right.The devil is here.





	3 a.m.

Venus watches the fireflies flicker through the window. The window is dusty, smudged, blurring the light until you can’t tell where the fireflies are.

 

Venus wants to go out to them. To lay down on the ground and watch the fireflies and freeze time so he never has to do anything else. Most people don’t like bugs, are afraid of big swarms like this--but Venus does. He knows what it’s like to be seen as disgusting, untouchable, and he thinks that the fireflies are more beautiful than he will ever be. And they can fly. 

 

But the devil is coming.

 

He looks away from the window and tries to quiet the too-fast, too-light pattering of his heart, beating off-rhythm in his chest, tries to quiet the imagination that is running full speed ahead towards things he can't have. He closes his eyes, rubs them to try to get the backs of his eyelids black instead of the red tinge they get underneath the fluorescent lighting of the cabin. 

 

And then he hears Neptune’s voice: “We need to go.”

 

She’s restless. Her voice is strong, unwavering, but her friends hear the frustration and anxiety no matter how hard she tries to hide it from them.

 

Venus thinks of the fireflies, the longing--but he knows the devil is coming.

 

“It’s too late,” he says, voice oddly calm, pulse still weak but a bit slower now, a bit steadier. “The devil’s here. Just like on the radio.”

 

Jupiter stands up, fiddling with her hair tie, voice high and not even trying to hide her feelings. “This place is awful, it's just making everything worse. We should get out of here. We need to get out of here.”

 

_ No _ , Venus thinks. He thinks he knows who he is now, and it doesn’t surprise him, but he doesn’t think the others know. And he remembers, still, the haze of fear and pain that comes after breaking the rules at this camp. His breath catches on his words when he tries to speak. “The captain.” He forces himself through it, makes himself keep talking even when it feels like his throat itself is working against him. “--w-on’t let us.” The word “won’t” comes out oddly, almost sing-songy, and he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, tries to get his throat to work again as  _ pansy _ sings in his ears to the tune of choir music.

 

“Screw him!” Neptune’s anger is bubbling up, getting closer to the surface. Venus tunes her out. He’s not changing his mind.

 

He hears Jupiter’s voice. Their voices mix, intermingle, a vague mumbling of background chatter that he knows--that he has always known--he can never be a part of. He’s not interested, or at least he tells himself he’s not. Even among his friends here, he is always the outcast: the unliked one, the weird one, the one that gets the group picked on, the only one that is ignored and left out time and time again, the only…  _ boy _ .

 

He looks over at the fireflies, walks closer to the window again. Jupiter and Neptune don’t notice. They never notice. Nobody notices Venus, ever. He isn’t invisible--just unseen.

 

Suddenly, out from the dark, a light shines in Venus’s eyes. A cry bursts free from his chest before he can stop himself, before he can shut himself up with  _ it’s not real, nobody can know, act normal _ . “What is it,” Venus asks, or tries to ask, because it comes out blank, monotone--flat affect, the shrinks said, once upon a time, Venus has  _ flat affect _ \--a statement rather than a question.

 

Jupiter hears him, eyes widening because--she realized he was there? but no, her pupils are shrinking, she’s getting closer, she can see it. It’s real.

 

Everyone in the cabin knows that they should all stay. Everyone in the cabin wants to run--Jupiter and Neptune want to run away, away from the fireflies and the lights and the hallucination that’s real this time, and Venus wants to run towards it. More beautiful, he thinks in passing, than he will ever be, and the casual sorrow of that grates. But then, as it approaches slowly, as he knows what will happen, the fear begins to build in his chest.

 

“...We should go.” Jupiter’s voice is distant. 

Neptune huffs in relief. “Seriously. God. Yes.” Venus can barely hear them over the static in his ears, and their voices are distorted. It's trying to listen to a phone call or a radio when your service is bad. 

 

_ God. _ That’s funny, especially in the tinny voice of someone who sounds far away even though they’re right next to you. Venus almost laughs, but catches himself at the last moment.  _ The bonfire--inappropriate. Can’t--can’t--friends-- _

 

And then it dawns on him, the other reason: He doesn’t want to run away from the light.

 

He manages to ask the question right this time, voice going up at the end, no laughter. “We shouldn't, I mean, isn't one of us supposed to stay here?”

 

The light comes inside. It doesn’t matter anymore. Venus forgets everything, forgets the beauty of the light, forgets his desire to be seen in the midst of the fear as the spotlight hits on the rest of his friends.

 

“Screw this,” Neptune says. “No waiting.”

 

The light starts approaching him.

 

Jupiter nods. “Now.”

 

And they run.

 

Venus is the first out of the door, like a feral animal streaking randomly through the wilderness, away, away, away. He matches the syllables to his footsteps: uh-wey, uh-wey, uh-wey.

 

But the light is everywhere, and he is skittish, darting this way and that, but he cannot escape it because it is  _ everywhere _ , and he cannot breathe, and he can’t see his friends, not in this light that wants him. This light that he wants, too, but nobody can know that. 

 

Jupiter asks him a question. He doesn’t know what she says--he can’t understand anything. But he knows it’s a question.  _ Yes, _ he thinks, and he says  _ something _ , but he doesn’t know what, stumbling and confused and as unintelligible as Jupiter.

 

And then Jupiter slams into him, passing through the veil of light, fireflies like twinkling stars, like the streets of a city at night, and he is on the ground and he doesn’t know what’s happening so he freezes, eyes shut tight against the dirt. Around him, the voices speak Isaiah, echoing the whispers of God:  _ How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! _ And he tries to ignore them but he can’t, but when Jupiter asks another question he manages to hear it above Revelation, and this time he is more solid in his answer. “Yeah.” His voice is cold. There is a word for it, but he doesn’t--

 

And Jupiter tries to stand up and they fall again and his cheek stings, hot against the cold ground, dirt and twigs and fallen leaves. Neptune helps Jupiter. They are talking. His face is wet as he flails, trying, trying, trying, to do something, but he doesn’t know what.

 

And then he does.

 

Venus stands up, and the lights flicker around them.

 

He is more certain now than he has ever been, and yet he is so unbearably afraid--afraid of the light, afraid of their friends, afraid of his own mind. Afraid, afraid, afraid; away, away, away. But... why?

 

“Why.”

 

The word is cold in his mouth. He doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t care.

 

“Why are you protecting me.”

 

Venus knows they care about him. But he also knows the hesitation, the intake of air, the snap of elastic against skin, that he would get if he asked Jupiter who her best friend is. He knows the way Neptune chokes on her own vomit more when talking to him than to Jupiter, he knows the way they look at each other--eyes that aren’t for him.

 

“Why won't you let me... Why can't you just let it have me. Why won't you go on without me. Why won't you?”

 

He knows what the strong thing is supposed to be. He is supposed to be brave, to look at the light and say no. He also knows that it is  _ wrong _ . Might  _ is  _ right, a voice whispers in the cruel voice of a million different tormentors, or maybe in the voice of God, and his hands fly up to cover his ears but he stops them at his mouth instead.

 

Another voice is whispering to Venus, too:  _ You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived. _

 

“I don't want to be strong. I don't want to be that sort of person at all.”

 

Venus can’t see the light anymore, but he knows it is pressing in; he feels it on his skin, goosebumps rippling up. And he has given up--no. He has given himself up. He knows what is about to happen, and he is so afraid, but he trusts fate, trusts God or the devil or the light or whatever it is that he feels setting the course of his life.

 

“The lights in the edge of my eyes. I want to see them so much. They're so horrible, I can't look away.

 

He knows his destiny. And he is willing.

_ This is my body, given for you, _ the voices whisper.

 

“I want them within me and without me. All through and about me. I want feathers in my lungs and eyes on my skin. I want my heart to see and my lungs to fly.”

 

The light is there--the light is there. All eyes on him. Not ignored anymore. And it is terrible. And it is wonderful. It is a nightmare--it is hell--it is the truth.

 

“I want to undo the division of day and night. I want to cast light over the city and shine shadows where the streetlights used to be.”

 

Venus never really knew, before his second fall, how intensely it was possible to want things. All of the things he has ever told himself  _ no _ to are whispering through the air.

 

Jupiter and Neptune look upset. Venus wants to comfort them: it’s okay. I wanted this.

 

“You're going to say I shouldn't give up, and there's hope, and we can all get through this… And that’s not a lie, but...”

 

They are speaking. Venus can’t understand them, but he can understand their faces: pleading, begging, already turning inwards and blaming themselves. He was--is--so certain, he  _ knows  _ it, he knows the flood of certainty and beauty has only just started, and he could speak about it without end, but he doesn’t know how to make them understand what he says, any more than he knows how to understand what they say. A million suns are reflecting in his eyes, and they see it now, but they are afraid.

 

Venus isn’t afraid, not anymore.

 

“It’s nobody’s fault but mine.”

 

Venus is ready.

 

_ And the angel said to them: ‘Do not be afraid!’ _

 

The light is on Venus now, and she feels herself rising, or maybe falling.

 

It's exactly what she imagined. 

**Author's Note:**

> liner notes here: http://weird-together.tumblr.com/post/169043121765/3-am-liner-notes  
> this is my first time doing liner notes, hopefully it works out and i'll keep doing this for future fics


End file.
